Evolution of a Kiss
by yra
Summary: Some things take time...
1. Little Girl

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_A/N: My first Cape fic, handle with care. I am a shameless Vince/Orwell shipper._

The first kiss is on her forehead.

There is a crazed man. Palm City attracts them like flies to honey.

There is a hypodermic needle pressed to the fragile flesh of her inner arm.

It's a virus.

The world is spinning, and her stomach is heaving until she can't hold even water down, and she is hot, then cold, then hot, then cold, and everything _hurts._ She begs Daddy to make it all better, then bats away the cold cloth against her forehead. A woman whispers to her soothingly as men argue somewhere nearby.

"I need your help! This thing is going to kill a lot of people, and this guy does not care who gets hurt."

"It's too risky. I won't walk into ARK's willing arms, Vincent."

"Max, please, she's dying!"

Silence, then a long sigh.

"Very well."

A moment later a hand brushes her cheek, and he whispers, "Raia?"

"I'll stay with her, Vince. Go."

"Hang on, Orwell. I'll be back soon."

She feels his lips on her forehead, gone in an instant, just a brief touch before he turns away.

She lays still for Raia, and though she moans she does not cry out for Daddy anymore. Instead she waits. Vince promised her he would be back soon, and unlike Daddy, Vince has never left her behind.

The second needle is thrust into her shoulder without much finesse, but she can barely feel anything by then. It takes time for her to realize the world is settling into its proper place. Her clothes are drenched in sweat but the air is delightfully cool. She can swallow the water offered to her. She can open her eyes.

Blue eyes are hovering over her. When she focuses on him his face relaxes into a grin. He sits beside her on the couch and continues to bathe her forehead, and the warmth of his hip pressed against her leg is so comforting she doesn't tell him the fever is gone. She doesn't speak at all, and neither does he. He brushes her hair back from her forehead, and perhaps it is the way he would brush the hair of a child, but she knows he took a risk with his own life when he pressed his lips to her fevered forehead just to comfort her. Maybe she is only a little girl to him, but she is _his_ little girl, and that is something, at least.


	2. Friend

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_A/N: My first Cape fic, handle with care. I am a shameless Vince/Orwell shipper._

The second kiss is on her nose.

Raia makes a wicked homemade brew that she calls wine. What it really is none of them want to know, but the kick makes even the men's eyes water, and it is most assuredly over the legal limit for alcohol.

Peter Flemming is having a fundraiser party. Under so many unknowing eyes, he will not dare make a move or link himself and Chess in any way. There is little for Orwell to be watching that night, and no one the Cape need save.

She pretends not to care that the fundraiser is for a local ballet school that was about to close due to lack of funds. Flemming must have an insidious motive behind his generosity. There is no chance that perhaps some little ballerina with her dark hair in a bun has reminded him of what it was like to love, and be loved.

After a glass of Raia's wine, even Ruvi is in a genial mood. Rollo sits beside Orwell and makes some broad hints that leave her giggling uproariously. Vince warns him to keep his hands off _his partner,_ and that makes her smile even more.

Max and Vince turn their backs to hold a quick conference, and Raia leans over and whispers in Orwell's ear. By the time the two men turn around Raia is in the center of the high wire, perfectly balanced. A little shaky under the influence of two glasses of wine, Orwell takes another step towards her.

"Uh, girls," Vince calls, "maybe this isn't such a good idea."

"Don't be such a stick in the mud," Raia shoots back with only a little bit of a slur. "She's doing great!"

"Orwell—"

"Shut up, Vince," she says without looking his way, "I can't focus."

"Hips, sweetie, it's all in the hips," Raia reminds her. She holds her hands out encouragingly. "You're a natural at this! Try a turn!"

"Do _not_ try a turn!" Vince orders, which is all she needs to hear.

Rollo and Ruvi cheer as she spins around on her toes just the way she was taught in those dance classes so long ago. Her hair gets in her eyes and she is laughing more than she has in years. Raia claps her hands. Vince curses.

"Vincent," Max chides with laughter, "she's not a child."

"Hell no, she's not!" Rollo shouts. "Damn fine, girl!"

Her steps are surprisingly steady. She thinks it's the wine that is making her fearless. Vince stands beside the wire with one hand raised, almost touching her ankle.

Later, when they are leaning against each other and giggling, Raia will ask her why she fell, and she will swear that Vince distracted her, and Raia will say how lucky she was to fall into his arms, and they will start to giggle again.

He catches her as Ruvi and Rollo groan in disappointment. Raia seizes their attention again with a graceful cartwheel on a very thin wire. No one sees Vince giving her an exasperated look as he sets her feet down.

"If you've got to do stupid stuff," he mutters, "do me a favor. Make sure you don't break your fingers. I need those."

She punches him in the arm and he plants a kiss on the end of her nose. It's quick, but it makes the air freeze in her lungs. She will not share that part with Raia later, or anyone. He is laughing at her. The lighting is always dim in the circus tent, and he can't see her blush. She manages a smile back as he puts his arm around her shoulders and gives her a friendly squeeze.

Maybe she is only a friend, but she is _his_ friend, and that is something more.


	3. Partners

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_Thanks: All fanfic writers are fuelled by reviews, so massive thanks go out to XxDeathStarxX, lje100smith, Funky in Fishnet (quite possibly one of my favorite pen names ever), TCandBTVSluver, angelwhite11, Donroth, Lady Krystalyn, and OneAV. You guys make me smile a lot. _

_A/N: Shameless Vince/Orwell shipper, but also fascinated by the possibilities of her relationship with her father. And the White Door of Doom will be making an appearance in the next couple chapters._

The third kiss is on her shoulder.

After several months she has finally given up on ordering Vince not to hover behind her when she is on the computer. When he becomes excited or agitated, his two most common states of emotion, he cannot sit still. He paces. He mutters to himself. He practices with the Cape, snagging things off the desk beside her. She thinks he does this to get a reaction out of her, but she never offers him one. Instead she lets her eyes fly across the computer screen as her fingers dance ever faster over the keys.

Finally, after being shushed for the third time, he will come and stand behind her and stare. He cannot read as fast as she does, but he catches enough keywords to ask questions that would only slow her down if she bothered to answer them. She doesn't, and he doesn't really expect her to.

After half an hour of pacing, fifteen minutes of muttering at the wall, and another twenty of playing with the Cape, he drags up a chair behind her and sits down. She can feel his presence far more than she would ever admit to him, or anyone. His breath moves the hair beside her face. His eyes are on the screen, probably at least one line behind hers. She doesn't wait for him to catch up, but, in her annoyance with his proximity, or perhaps her own intense reaction to his proximity, she clicks through the windows faster.

"How do you cut through Flemming's personal files easier than even the ARK business files?" he murmurs, dangerously close to her ear.

She's glad he doesn't actually expect an answer. She cannot tell him that she's better at guessing Peter Flemming's password than anyone else in the world. ARK's business rivals expect him to use passwords selected strictly for security purposes, perhaps even randomly generated by some computer. Chess's enemies expect his codes to be the spaces and pieces on the board.

But he is never random, and never obvious. His passwords are far more obscure, and yet basic.

His office computer's password is, "Roscoe12."

His home security password is, "0Lilian10."

His bank account password is, "Forsythe87."

His BlackBerry password is, "Rothbart"

His home computer is, "JaElFl89."

She knows all this, but it isn't so much clever hacking as a good memory. She is one of a few people who know that he had his first dog, a basset hound named Roscoe, for twelve years. Few know that his nanny, a woman name Lilian, was with him from his birth until the time he turned ten. Few know that he graduated from Oxford in 1987, and his favorite subject was statistics, taught by Professor Forsythe. Very few know his favorite ballet is Swan Lake.

And no one else knows, or remembers, that his daughter, Jamie Eleanor Flemming, was born 1989.

"Wait, go back, what was that?"

"Nothing important," she says quickly. "Quiet."

"But that said something about one million dollars!"

"Not much for Flemming. Shut up, Vince."

"One million dollars, going into the same account each month! I saw that much. Orwell, go back."

"No."

"But I saw—"

Finally, he manages to get a reaction out of her, but it is not necessarily the one he wanted. She freezes, her fingers hovering motionless over the keyboard, her eyes straight forward on the screen. She speaks from between her teeth.

"Listen, if you don't trust me to handle this part of our partnership, maybe you should go find someone else."

There is a tense moment of silence, then she feels his chin drop down onto her shoulder. He sighs a long, martyred sigh, but she can feel him shake his head.

"Nah, it'd take me too long to find another partner who would put up with me the way you do," he whispers, then gives a little triumphant laugh when she cannot quite stop a smile from curling her lips.

He falls quiet again, but he keeps his chin propped on her shoulder. It's heavy. She should ask him to move. Instead she flips through a few more documents, and she hopes she is going fast enough that he doesn't realize that she is carefully avoiding touching anything titled "Odile".

"Here, this is interesting," she says, and distracts him further by pointing out money being shuttled into yet another account. This one she is only too happy for him to see. "Dr. Samuel Leeks. He keeps him well paid, and is housing him, too."

"Alright, then, let's learn a little more about Dr. Leeks," he says happily. "You are very, very good at this."

"And you doubted," she shoots back, allowing herself to relax back into her chair.

"I will never doubt my Orwell again," he assures her, then presses a quick kiss to the shoulder under his chin, jumps up, and seizes the Cape and his mask off the couch. "You're my eyes!"

He disappears too fast to see that she is staring down at the place where his lips hit, right at the edge of her sweater so there was the briefest of brush of flesh on flesh. She blinks back unhappiness from her eyes, and even finds a little smile.

Maybe they are only partners, but she is _his_ partner, _his_ Orwell, and that is so very much.


	4. His

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_Thanks: I always love to hear from you guys, so massive thanks go out to darkbloo, lje100smith, XxDeathStarxX, yeahthathappens, J, TCandBTVSluver, and Fanmlz. You guys rock!_

_A/N: Shameless Vince/Orwell shipper, but also fascinated by the possibilities of her relationship with her father._

The fourth kiss is on her cheek.

He is angry, but she is furious.

"You could have gotten yourself killed!" he shouts at her as he throws his mask onto the table. "What the hell were you thinking?"

She turns her back on him and takes her turn to throw something, in her case the large messenger bag she wore across her chest as ARK soldiers chased her across the city. The easiest way to tell if information is good is how far ARK is willing to go to get it back. Those had not been rubber bullets whizzing past her ears. For men carrying the best weapons blood money could buy they had truly abysmal aim. She wonders briefly if Flemming knows he is not getting his money's worth, and actually laughs aloud imagining that phone conversation.

_"Daddy, I don't know how much you spent on those rather large weapons the men chasing me were carrying, but you might want to lodge a complaint with that desert warlord you bought them from. Not one of them even came close to killing me!"_

Vince, of course, cannot hear her thoughts, and he does not think there is anything funny about any of this.

"Damn it, Orwell, you didn't call for help, you didn't try to go to ground, you just kept running! If they caught you, knowing that you're Orwell, they wouldn't have arrested you! They would have killed you!"

She is picking up her bottle of water. Her fist clenches convulsively at his words. She suddenly realizes she is shaking all over, she is covered in sweat and bruises, and she is completely, utterly exhausted.

"Orwell!" Vince shouts at her back. "Do you want to die?"

She wants to laugh.

She wants to cry.

She wants to say, "No."

But they aren't just headaches. She knew that right away. She has an excellent memory. She remembers whispers, and screams, and slammed doors, and stacks of pill bottles, and red smeared across the glaring white tiles of the bathroom floor. Daddy said that Mom was tired and needed to get away for a little while. He promised that Mom would be back soon. But little Jamie thought it was so strange the way he sat on the bathroom floor staring at those white and red tiles, spaced almost like a checkerboard. But Daddy didn't play checkers. Daddy only really liked one game.

Dr. Samuel knew lots of games. He had played them with Mom, because he said he thought they would make her feel more cheerful. But whenever Dr. Samuel left, Mom would go to bed with a _headache._ The next day would come the screaming.

Whenever Mom wasn't feeling well enough to play Dr. Samuel's games, if Daddy was gone, Dr. Samuel would play with Jamie.

She remembers his smile. She remembers his voice. She remembers the door…the White Door…

She doesn't remember what games Dr. Samuel wanted her to play.

But she knows she will. Whatever he did to her, to her mother, to her father when he was a little boy, it all lies within that White Room. Someday that door will force itself open, and Jamie will have to face it.

"I want…"

A hand seizes her arm and spins her around, and suddenly she is staring up into blue eyes. They are not like Flemming eyes. Flemmings have eyes so dark that they try to drag you down into their hell with them. But _his_ eyes…so clear, piercing, straight…

She hits him as hard as she can. He staggers back, but she does not try to deceive herself that it is from her strength. She took him completely by surprise. He is standing before her, his mask gone but the Cape still on, and under the shock and anger there is still concern and affection, and she very nearly hates him.

"What do you care?" she screams at him, and she tries desperately not to notice how like her mother she sounds right now. "What do you care, Vince? We both want the same thing, right? We both want to destroy Peter Flemming! So, we'll do that, and you get to go home to your wife, and your son, and you won't have to be a dead criminal anymore, you can be a live hero with medals and ribbons and a damn parade! You get to _leave_ this hell, and I…I…I just become mist. I fade into the White."

He is silent, and still. He can hide nothing in those blue eyes, and she sees the confusion and fear. She knows that look. It crept into the eyes of each of her mother's friends, right before they slipped out of her life. It is the look a person gets when they realize someone they know is standing on that ledge between sanity and madness.

It is a lot to handle, and most people cannot. She does not blame them, and she will not blame him when he slips away, too. He will go home, and she will be left with a destroyed psychopathic father who is in jail or an asylum, a bi-polar mother who was utterly shattered by cruel mind games and hidden away, and a name no one remembers.

"I don't want to fade away. I _can't._"

And it is all too much, and she folds.

He catches her before she hits the ground. She is shaking harder than ever. She grabs fistfuls of the Cape and clings to it as he holds her up. Her eyes are still dry. She has not cried in so very long, and she does not want to start again in front of him. She buries her face against his shoulder, the spider silk soft against her face, and her breath hitches on a sob, but there are no tears.

"Hey," he whispers against her ear as he begins to rock her slightly. "Hey. It's alright. I've got you."

She shakes her head mutely, twisting the Cape tighter between her fingers.

"You aren't going to fade away," he murmurs, one hand stroking over her hair. "You won't, I promise."

That gets a laugh from her, but only because she knows that even if he knew how completely impossible it was to save her, he would still try just as hard.

She cannot run from whatever was done to her forever. She will not live her life locked up in asylums, perhaps screaming, or maybe offering people a game of chess with a cold smile. She will not let herself become that.

And if she must die, she will let ARK soldiers do the job. Because one of them will have to bring the news of her death to Flemming, and he will be pleased for just a moment over the fall of Orwell, until he pushes back the sheet and stares down at Jamie.

"Vince," she whispers. "You can't save everyone."

The arms around her tighten, as though he can hold her together by sheer willpower, and that is when his lips touch her cheek, just under her ear, and linger there.

Then he vows fiercely once more, "You won't fade away. I won't _let_ you."

She pushes her face into the crook of his neck, seeking the warmth of skin, and just sighs. She does not have the energy to fight with him tonight. But something occurs to her, something she should have asked before.

"How did you know where to find me in the first place?"

"Rollo. He called me and said, 'Your girl's out doing something stupid. You might want to get over there.'"

She says nothing more, and it is quiet, but she cannot smile.

Dana is the cop's wife, but she is _the Cape's_ girl, completely, and that terrifies her so much.


	5. Interlude: Vincent

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_Thanks: I always love to hear from you guys, so massive thanks go out to lje100smith (I hope this answers the Dana questions for everyone) XxDeathStarxX (Samuel creeped me out, so I'm taking you all down with me, but I'm glad you like it) darkbloo (he did seem very happy to play into the Chess delusion, didn't he?) vtangelchix (Orwell's background always fascinated me, so I'm glad you guys like my twist on it) and tcandbtvsluver (it's easy to write good emotion with these two, Summer and David's chemistry is off the charts)_

_A/N: Vince gets to have his say, too._

Everything is spinning out of control.

She fell asleep hours ago, curled into a tiny ball on his couch. He left the Cape wrapped around her and took off her boots. She has little feet. He forgets, sometimes, how very small she is, and how very young.

And as Orwell sleeps on his couch, Vince sits in her chair, his elbows braced on his thighs and his hands knotted tightly on his knees, and watches.

She is slipping. He has known something is very wrong since the Lich blew his poison in her face. She will not talk about it, but he found her doped and dressed in a wedding gown, so he can guess where Chandler's twisted fantasy took them. Sometimes she looks at him like he is a ghost or a half-forgotten nightmare. Sometimes she looks at him like he is the only lifeline and she is sinking fast. Either way, when he looks back at her she turns away.

He was a cop long enough to recognize the symptoms of a victim. He even tried his hand at Special Victims, despite the fact that Dana had been against it. Some of the other detectives called it the 'vampire squad'. It sucked the life out of every cop. But he thought he could handle it. He thought he was strong, that he could be strong for those victims. Most lasted six months. He made it seven. He said it was not affecting his marriage, even though he found it hard to make love to his own wife. He said it did not change how he raised his son, yet suddenly every one of Trip's friends' fathers was under scrutiny that would do the Secret Service proud. He said he was fine.

He said that as his finger trembled over the trigger while the muzzle dug into the temple of a half-clothed man. The young boy remained where he had been dropped, so terrified he had fled away into himself and could not even see his rescuers. His mother had been found smoking a cigarette on the porch and looking bored. Vince's partner approached him like he was a wild animal, and it hit him how close he was to snuffing this man's life out, and how much he would not care.

The next day, Marty and Vince both requested transfers.

Now, studying the young woman on his couch, he raises his hands and props his chin on his fingers. It goes deeper than Chandler, but he was the catalyst that brought it all rushing back. Something happened a long time ago.

The first thought is always, unfortunately, the father, but he casts that aside. Gregor was right. She has daddy issues. But he also called her a daddy's girl, and Vince thinks this was true, too, once. The two or three fleeting references have been pained but affectionate. She was abandoned, but not abused.

The next is the mother, but again he barely considers this before moving on. Her mother she has spoken of once, almost indifferently. Again, there is abandonment. He cannot grasp why two people who should have loved her would be so willing to leave her behind, and it sparks an anger in him. She should never have been left to find comfort on a couch in something little more than a cave.

So then the rest of the world becomes suspect, and he hates that idea. It gives him nowhere to look, and nothing to hunt. He is a fixer. He likes to, no, _needs_ to fix things. He _needs_ to fix her before he can return to his family.

Because everything is spinning out of control, and nothing is going as planned. He joined ARK to escape the corruption rampant in his department only to find that he had just allied himself with the source of it all. He went to the train yards to protect the people of Palm City and became branded their worst enemy. He put on the Cape to give his son hope and found that the rest of the city needed him even more. He joined Orwell to destroy Peter Flemming so that Vincent Farraday could clear his name and come back to life.

Every day he dies a little more to the rest of the world.

Dana does not need a hero, she needs a real man, something more than just smoke and shadows and tricks. When she looks at him now, she is not looking at her husband, her best friend, the father of her child. She is looking at a stranger. There is fascination, and there is compassion, and there is concern, but there is no love. She is not a soldier's wife, waiting for her husband to come home from war.

She is a widow, with nothing to wait for anymore.

Trip is growing up before his eyes…and behind a closed window. The boy, _his_ boy, is strong and sure, and he has never been so proud of anything in his life. But his part in Trip's life has become that of an observer. It is terrifying to watch their lives as a single widow and a half-orphaned boy, not only because they are in pain and ostracized, but also because neither thinks to look out the window and see him sitting there, just waiting for an invitation to come in.

He leans back in the chair, drops his hands into his lap, stares at the ceiling, and sighs.

Yes, he might, someday have a chance to go home, if Peter Flemming is arrested or killed, and if Scales is forever locked away, and if Tracey Jerrod does not get a "lucky" chance at an open door in the asylum, and if Gregor does not manage to escape, and if Conrad Chandler loses his next appeal.

The problem is, every time he puts on the Cape, that list of "ifs" gets just a little longer, and his family gets just a little further away.

He has not told Orwell what he realized the day Marty died. He finally accepted that he might not be going home. He wants it. He still wants them. But when Dana's boss came running onto the scene armed with a staple gun there had been a flash of amused affection in her eyes that he had never seen her direct towards another man before…and Vincent Farraday had died a tiny bit more.

No, the enemies were not planned, and his family moving forward without him was not planned, and…and she was not planned.

He stands up and moves to the couch. She is still asleep, and her lashes are fluttering wildly against her dreams. He pulls the Cape a little tighter around her and stares. She is very small, and very young, and a complete mystery with no real name or past, and she is fragile, and she might be breaking apart…but here and now, she is all he has, and he cares more than he could ever dare to admit.

She has become one of his "ifs".

He did not realize until after she fell asleep that he never argued with Rollo when he called Orwell "your girl", and Orwell never spoke out against it, either.

He touches her hair lightly with the tips of his fingers, then leans down and brushes a light kiss across the back of her head.

Everything is spinning out of control, and they have only each other to hold onto until the spinning stops.


	6. Pieces

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_Thanks: I always love to hear from you guys, so massive thanks all around, but I should have been in bed half an hour ago, so personal thanks later._

The fifth kiss is on her fingers.

She is standing in front of her bathroom mirror. Her eye shadow brush lays at the edge of her vanity where she dropped her minutes or hours ago. Her hands are trembling on the porcelain sink. She is staring at the face reflected back at her from the glass.

She knows the face, sees it every day, and yet she is suddenly wondering who she is seeing.

Who is she watching?

Who is watching her?

One hand presses to the glass beside that face. The eyes are dark, too dark, as though there is no soul there. But _something_ is looking out of those eyes. Some mind is watching the world around her, filing information away. The world comes at her like she is watching from the computer screen. It is away from her, held back by a thin sheet of glass, and she is just watching.

Her fingers skate across the mirror. She tests it with the tips of her fingers. It is cold and smooth and hard. She can see everything around her, a reflection, a mirage of reality that she cannot touch.

Nails leave no imprint on the glass. Her other hand raises beside the first, both pushing to get through. The real world is there, Jamie is there and hope is there and fear is not there, if only she can just find her way back…

Her fist crashes into the glass. There is barely a crack. Rage and desperation are clawing at the back of her mind, trying to break free. She wants to get away from that stranger, that girl with no soul in her eyes. She knows she cannot run, because she will just turn and find that the other one is still there. The only way to get away is _through._

The jewelry box is heavy. It belonged to her grandmother. She has not been able to discard the ornaments of her past. She lifts it over her head and throws it as hard as she can.

The sound is terrible. The old wood splinters as the glass breaks. The air is full of gold and jewels flying into her face like blood spray. Something sharp hits her cheek. Heavy things are catching at strands of her hair, then falling away.

Faces are staring back, shattered, fractured, too many for one face but not enough for more. She recognizes them all. There is Jamie, tears clinging to trembling lashes. There is Orwell, cracks running through the eyes that watch everything and touch nothing. And there is someone else.

_ White walls._

_ A white table._

_ "Would you like to play a game?"_

Her hand touches those faces. She likes the sensation of running her fingers over their cracks and fissures. It splits her skin and the blood trickles down her fingers, into the palm of her hand. All the girls smile as the pain goes deeper. The pain is different from the headaches. It is good.

It is real.

She presses harder into the glass, willing it to cut her wide open. Cut them all up and out of each other. Make the whispering, the arguing stop.

_Make it stop._

The glass slices open her palm. The blood is flowing thicker, dark as the ruby earring caught in the neck of her white sweater. She pulls it the other way, dragging the cut wider. She wonders, if she opens deep enough, will there be one set of bones, or three? Blood is hot as it spurts from the heel of her hand. Her body is cold. She is shaking again.

The skin splits closer and closer to her wrist, both hands sliding up the mirror over shattered faces and three girls are whimpering for the deepest cut, the one that can finally rip them all apart—

"What the hell are you_ doing?_"

Just as the sharp edge licks at the flesh over two pulsing veins she is stumbling backwards. Her back hits the wall. The faces contort with horrified shock as her hand clutch uselessly at empty air for a split second.

She turns fast, grinding gold under her heel. Her hand catches the first thing she can find. She swings the hand mirror as hard as she can. There is a shout of surprised pain that does not belong here. Blood is not just on the handle of the mirror, but also the edge.

The world snaps back into focus so fast and hard that she staggers. Three voices slam together in her mind. They are struggling for control for a split second, then she blinks and, for the moment, she is the only one inside her head, and she can see straight.

"Vince?"

He is standing in front of her with his hands out to defend himself. His eyes are wide and shocked. There is a thin cut on his arm.

Orwell shakes her head uncertainly. "What are you doing here?"

"What…what am I doing here?" he echoes back blankly. "Orwell, what the hell?"

"What?" she shoots back, almost exasperated.

"_Your hands!_"

The blood is dripping down on the gold and pink sapphire set _he_ gave her for her sixteenth birthday. He called it the ballerina set…in his note.

The pain comes back, but now it is dull and aching. The sharp, clean cuts are gone. There is only one face in the mirror, shattered and sad, and something like loss tears at her heart.

The moan is ripped out of her. She does not care about the blood as she covers her face with her hands. Sliding down the wall, she huddles on the floor, her knees pulled up to her chest as she whimpers.

"No. Please, please, no."

A hand is on her shoulder. Another is pulling at her own hands, trying to pry them away from her face. He is pleading softly with her.

"I need you to get up. I need to take care of your hands."

She tries to thrust him away with one elbow, shaking her head wildly, but he ignores her and continues to whisper.

"Come on. Let's just get you onto the bed. Please, you're bleeding badly, and I really need to bandage you up."

"Leave me alone."

He sighs, and for one elated, terrified moment she thinks he is giving up. But she knows him better than that. An arm slides behind her back, another under her knees, and suddenly she is off the ground but resting against his chest.

She is lowered onto something soft. She can hear him in the bathroom again, rummaging for a first aid kit or something similar. A moment later the sounds stop, and after a few heartbeats the mattress sinks beside her.

"Give me your hands."

She does not argue anymore. Silently she stretches out her hands to him. He lays them in his lap on one of her nice, pale blue towels, and turns them over to survey the damage. His eyebrows rise in alarm and he gasps.

"Orwell…God."

The cuts slit almost the entire length of all her fingers. Her right palm is torn open. She can see him form the argument for taking her to the hospital, then reluctantly discard it. After a moment of staring uncertainly he seems to decide to start at the worst spot.

"This is going to sting."

The antiseptic should make her wince, but while she gasps, it is almost in ecstasy. The pain racing up the nerves of her hands and arms seems to bind three girls tighter together in reality and clears her brain even more.

He uses four butterfly bandages to close her palm. He is gentle, wincing where she should while she stares motionless at his face. As he wraps the gauze around her hand he balances it delicately on his fingers to avoid even an accidental brush against her wounds. Her fingers are bound up almost all the way. Just the tips are free.

Very softly, he lays her hands down on her own knees. Finally he raises his eyes to her face. He is silent and still. She wonders what he sees there. He lifts the one clean corner of the towel and carefully wipes her face. Then he lets it fall, and sits and stares at her.

"What is going on?"

She opens her mouth to answer. It closes without a sound. She does not know how to tell him he is watching someone go mad.

He shakes his head and looks away. She can see the tight muscles in his neck and jaw. He barely seems to have registered the disarray, the painted floors and walls and furniture. Instead he just glares at the wall.

"Vince," she whispers pleadingly. "Vince, please."

"How can I help you," he hisses from between clenched teeth, "if you won't let me?"

"You can't," she says. "It was always going to be like this. I just hoped I would have more time, before…"

He still will not look at her. "Before what?"

She flexes her hands under the gauze. The flesh pulls away from the butterfly bandages a little. The blood is already beginning to soak through.

"Why did you have to show up when you did?" she whispers, and she does not know if she is referring to tonight at her home, or another night on the docks.

"Because I was worried about you!"

He is angry now. He is glaring not at the wall but at her, and she flinches back a little. His hand seizes her wrist roughly for a second until she winces, and then he drops her as though she burnt him.

"You aren't answering your phone, and you're acting out of it every time you're around, and you keep doing stupid, _stupid_ stuff!" he shouts at her. "It's like you can't stop yourself from trying to get killed, and damn it, Orwell, I'm trying to _help you!_"

"Well, stop trying to help me!" she yells right back.

"NO!"

He has her shoulders, and his blue eyes are so close to hers that she is afraid of what he will see in there. She wants to pull away, but he keeps staring straight into her eyes. He shows no disgust, no fear. Maybe he cannot see the truth.

Or maybe, just maybe, he can, and he does not care.

Her hands are shaking wildly as she reaches up and touches his face. He stays perfectly still, letting her bare fingertips slide down from his temples to his cheeks to his jaw. He feels different than everything else in the world.

He feels _real._

"Vince," she whispers, "tell me. Who am I?"

He is silent. She does not blame him. He knows no more than she does.

He takes her wrists, gently this time, and draws her hands along his jaw to meet at his chin. Then he bows his head, closes his eyes, and kisses her bare fingertips.

Whoever she is, she is with him, and for right now, that is enough.


	7. Tiny Dancer

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_A/N: Yes, there is music in this chapter, but I worked hard not to let it turn into a real songfic, so please be patient. Oh, and massive props to anyone who figures out where I got Castleman Securities from, 'cause I borrowed it. Songs, in order, belong to My Chemical Romance (Helena), Elton John (Tiny Dancer), and Snow Patrol (Set Fire to the Third Bar)_

_Thanks: Thank you, thank you, thank you for the reviews, y'all! Special thanks go out to lje100smith (yeah, it was morbid, but I'm still in mourning that we aren't going to see Summer Glau play crazy, and let's face it, no one does it better than her) XxDeathStarxX (I hope they're in character, but we are all looking at them through shipper-colored glasses…and loving it, too, but I do think Orwell showed herself more willing to help than accept help) Suzicles (they are amazing, and I love them together) Orwell is watching-xoxo (thank you, I'm always happy to hear people are enjoying my little excursions of imagination) southern cross (I'm thrilled that not only can you enjoy my fic, but that our two stories are going in different directions and you still like it anyway!) vtangelchix (vivid language is something we all love to hear, so thank you for that, it made my day) and of course, Funky in Fishnets (the other thing we all love to hear is that what we write actually effects someone, so you definitely made my day, too)_

The sixth kiss is on her mouth.

Three windows are open on the screen in front of her. One ear bud is glued to her left ear, but as Vince is off talking to Max she is, for once, not listening for his voice demanding information. Instead music is whispering through the back of her mind. She barely notices when one tune changes to the next, but she is keeping an eye on the door. It would be bad form for Orwell to be caught listening to Fergie and will. i. am. debate what provocation the latter might give the former to start some drama, even by her partner.

The first window open on her computer is a twenty-four hour newscast reporting on the possible merger of ARK Corporation and a smaller security company with headquarters in Washington, DC, Castleman Security. The second window is the quarterly financial reports on Castleman for the last three years. The third is the personal financial information on James DuFort, Castleman CEO.

The merger is concerning. It stretches Peter Flemming's power further across the country and around the world and adds trained soldiers to his ever growing personal army. It isn't anything new, but it certainly worsens the situation at hand.

A blast of noise makes her jump in her chair. Her head starts to turn towards the door when she makes out the words.

"_Burning on,_

_ "Just like the match you strike to incinerate,_

_ "The lives of everyone you know"_

"Damn it," she hisses, hitting the fourth icon on the bar at the bottom of the screen. Her playlist appears over top DuFort's picture. She glares at the highlighted song, "Helena" by My Chemical Romance, then clicks to the next song absently, her eyes already straying back to DuFort's finances. Something isn't right…

The music changes to something soft, but the first few tinkling notes from the piano cause a reaction that dwarfs her alarm moments ago. Her fingers freeze over her keyboard. Her eyes drift a little to the right, focusing not on her present surroundings but on her past.

It was Daddy's favorite song. Sometimes he had to leave for work, and he would be gone for days, maybe even weeks. Every time she waited until she heard Mom go to bed the night before, then crawled from under her blankets and tiptoed back down stairs in her nightgown. His office light was always on. She slipped in and watched him sitting there at his desk until he looked up at her. He smiled. Then he turned around and pressed a button on the stereo on the wall behind him, and those tinkling notes from the piano began. He stood up and came around the desk, holding his hands out to her, and she ran to him. He took her little hands in his much larger grasp. He was so big and strong, and he held her close as they danced slowly around the room to that song.

She knew then that she was loved.

But as she got older, she had to stand there longer and longer, watching him at his desk and waiting for him to look up. Then one night an angry twelve-year-old Jamie decided not to go downstairs at all. He would have to come to her. She sat up against her headboard waiting until she saw the first sliver of the sun at the eastern horizon.

When she finally went down for breakfast the housekeeper cheerfully informed her that her father said he would be home in a week, and that he left his love.

Orwell opens her eyes, realizing for the first time that she even shut them. The song is almost over. DuFort is smiling engagingly at her from the news report while his finances show nothing but corruption and lies. There is innocent blood on his hands to hide his own crimes, and she is watching as he stretches out that bloody hand to shake the hand that used to hold her own and dance her around his office to this song.

For one wild moment she thinks she is going to be sick. Her hand flies to her mouth. She tastes blood. She jerks her hand free, her eyes flashing down to see if he left some kind of sick residue there when she was a child. But no, she has merely pulled open a cut again. Vince declared her hand sufficiently healed yesterday to uncover most of it, but for some reason she is constantly opening the terrible cut in her right palm. Sometimes she wonders if she does it on purpose to keep the pain.

The song is over. There is the tiny hesitation between it and the next, and she is staring at those three open windows and their damning information, and her hand is throbbing and bleeding again, and suddenly she is just tired of it all. She minimizes James DuFort and Castlman and hits replay.

She told Vince once about dancing as a child. She never told him how long it has been since she has danced at all. Even as a teenager, to rhythms very different from Swan Lake and the Nutcracker, she loved to get lost in the music.

She has not danced since she ran away from home at sixteen.

Unplugging her headphones, she lets the music spill from speakers into the dark spaces of the room. For a few moments she just sits with her head back and her eyes closed, listening. There is nothing but the piano and a man's voice.

"_Ballerina,_

_ "You must have seen her,_

_ "Dancing in the sand"_

She pushes her chair back and stands. Her feet are moving before she realizes. Slowly, her dark hair a shadow floating around her, she spins across the room. A smile finds its way on to her face. She cannot believe her body remembers it all so easily. Her back arches and she reaches over her head and back as she raises one leg behind, her body now a long, elegant bow. For a moment she holds, then drops her leg and lowers her arms until they are stretched like swan's wings at her sides. On her toes now, she glides across the floor, back towards her desk with tiny steps, her feet crossing gracefully across each other. Her body dips forward as she moves, her arms floating down until her wrists meet. Her fingers are a breath from the floor. Then she is up on the toes of her right foot, the other leg stretched out in front of her, her back straight, and she is turning like the little ballerina in a child's jewelry box as the music plays.

_"Hold me closer tiny dancer,_

_ "Count the headlights on the highway,_

_ "Lay me down in sheets of linen,_

_ "You had a busy day today"_

She rises as high as she can on her toes, both feet under her. Then her right foot slides forward and her left knee bends. Her hands drift out in front of her, her right lying on top of her left. She sinks down to the floor, left leg under her and right leg stretched in front, her long hair settling down around her, her fingers laying almost on her ankle, her cheek resting against her arms, and smiles.

"_Tiny dancer in my hands."_

The applause makes her jump harder than ever. She jerks her head up, her eyes wide in shock, to see Vince standing by the desk, looking down at her. He is smiling slightly.

"That was…wow."

Orwell pulls her feet under her and scrambles to her feet, far from graceful. She can feel her cheeks burning, and is torn between embarrassment and anger. Either way, she glares at him, crosses her arms protectively across her chest, and thanks whatever powers that be that she is wearing pants today. Twirling about in a skirt might have given Vince even more insight into his partner, especially her choice of undergarments.

"How long have you been standing there?" she demands.

"Since the first chorus," he responds readily, and he does not look in the least penitent.

"Why didn't you say something?"

"Because you would have stopped dancing, and it was beautiful."

She freezes. She had not expected that response. Vince smiles again and moves towards her computer, even though he knows she hates it when he plays with her things. Before he can touch the keyboard she is beside him, swatting at his hand.

"I was just looking into Flemming's latest merger, and…and…"

"And it just made you wanna dance?"

The smile has changed to a grin, and the glare has settled into a scowl.

"Shut up, Vince," is all she can come up with, and it is not nearly enough. So she shoves him in the arm with her right hand.

"Careful!" he admonishes, catching her wrist lightly. He looks into her palm at the gauze taped there and the smile turns to a frown. "You're bleeding again."

"It's nothing," she mutters, trying to tug her hand free. He holds on, but gently. She risks a glance into his face, so close to hers, and sees the concern there. She softens her expression. "It's going to pull a little bit, Vince. I type a lot, in case you haven't noticed."

The smile returns, though it is smaller and uncertain. The music is still on, and the song has changed again. A piano starts again, only this time it is joined by a single guitar.

_"I find the map and draw a straight line,_

_ "Over rivers, farms and state lines,_

_ "The distance from 'A' to where you'd be"_

His hand slides down from her wrist to take her hand in his much larger grasp. She frowns uncertainly at him as he raises both their hands up over her head. Then he touches her waist lightly with his fingers, pushing gently, and she turns slowly under his arm.

He keeps her fingers in his own. His hand stays on her waist, so light she can barely feel the pressure beneath her clothes, but her entire body is focused on that one point where he touches her.

Vince steps towards her and she falls back. She obeys without thinking when he steps back and his hand urges her to follow him. He approaches again and she flees. She turns slightly on the spot and he steps to the side, following.

A step forward and a step back.

A step back and a step forward.

The space between them does not change.

She cannot get closer to him, and she cannot run.

Around the room, back and forth, circling each other.

He steps forward.

She steps back.

She steps forward.

He does not move.

The room goes still, with only a few strains of music and their breathing.

His hand is wrapped firmly around her waist. Their chests are touching. His eyes are intensely blue and staring straight into hers. She feels strange, dizzy, almost weak.

"Vince," she whispers.

It is such a soft brush of a touch that she might have imagined it, except he is holding her very still and not backing away. The pressure increases. His eyes do not waver as hers close.

An arm at her back.

His mouth on hers.

Warmth.

Safety.

Her hand reaches for his shoulder and stretches under the bandage.

Pain brings her sharply back to reality. Her eyes are open. Now his are closed. Fear of what he sees against his eyelids, eyes a lighter brown than hers and framed by red hair, makes her pull her lips away.

He opens his eyes in some surprise.

_"I'm miles from where you are,_

_ "I lay down on the cold ground"_

"Orwell," he murmurs, a thumb brushing over her cheek.

He thinks he knows who he is looking at, and for one wild second, she wants to tell him.

She wants to tell him everything, about the dances in his office and sundaes at midnight after bad dreams and the way it felt as she saw more and more reports that could not be right, not about her father, not her family, like a house of cards coming down, and she is shaking her head and backing away before she speaks because if she says it he will be the one to run.

No, she will run, because it is what she is best at.

"Orwell," he tries again, stepping towards her, but she just shakes her head harder and pulls free of his arm.

"I can't, Vince, I just can't, I'm sorry."

She whirls away and makes for the door as fast as she can.

The music chases her from the room as he stands motionless.

_"I pray that something picks me up,_

_ "And sets me down in your warm arms"_

She is at her car, almost at a run, when she realizes she left everything behind. Her computer and her purse and her stun gun are still back there with Vince. Her keys are there, too.

Leaning on the door, she closes her eyes and breaths deep, trying to still her spinning mind.

It's what she wants, and yet to be with him, in his hands, is just too much.


	8. Solace

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch._

_Thanks: This one took a while to get through, and was re-written several times, so thanks for patience. Yra lives off of reviews, so many, many thanks go out to XxDeathStarxX (I was nervous about having them dance, but your review, the first for that chapter, made me sigh with relief and smile) lje100smith (booya! give the lady a kewpie doll, it was Leverage, and I have no idea why I decided to use that but it sounded like fun, and after a moment like Orwell and Vince just had you can never go back to the way it was…thankfully) Ice-Eagle Y'siri (that was sweet, we all need to hear encouragement like that sometimes) Orwell is watching-xoxo (you seriously threw me when you changed your pen name but I've got it figured out now, and I am sorry it took so long to get sorted out) Funky In Fishnet (it is a very fragile relationship, and it's going to take a lot of work, but I always wanted to use Tiny Dancer as Flemming's favorite song for Jamie because it's perfect and I just love that song) and southern cross (I admit, Vince watching her dance and enjoying it is kinda hot, but it helps that the characters do have such lovely chemistry, and someday we may know just what he was thinking as he was watching her)_

The seventh kiss is solace.

She turns back for her keys and her purse, and he is standing behind her, holding both. There is a tiny frown in between his brows, but he manages a pained smile. He holds her belongings out to her. As she reaches for them, her fingers brush over the backs of his hands.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

She stops, her hands still out to his, both of them grasping her keys.

"For what?" she asks, her voice no louder than his.

"I shouldn't have…" He lets go. The smile has faded but the pain remains. "I'm your partner, Orwell, and I'm your friend. Do you believe that?"

She crosses her arms over her chest, clutching her belongs protectively. After a moment, though, she lets her hands fall as she nods. "I do."

"I don't want you to be afraid of me. I won't…do that, ever again."

He reaches out for a moment like he will touch her shoulder, then thinks better and lowers his hand again. The slight smile flits across his face again. He turns around to leave.

"Vince," she says before she can stop herself, "I need to tell you something."

He spins around, surprise, uncertainty, and something like hope in his eyes. He's several steps away now. He's just out of reach, just far enough for doubts to start to slip between them. But she's made her choice. She closes the distance and looks up at him.

"Flemming has a weakness."

"Flemming?" Vince repeats, as though he has never heard the name before. "I…you…sorry, what?"

"He has a weakness," Orwell says again. She cannot stand looking into those sharp blue eyes anymore, so she drops her eyes to her purse as she puts her keys away. "Something I never told you about."

From the corner of her eye she can see him wrestling with this change of direction, but he finally seems to shift the gears in his mind. He nods and takes a step back.

"Right. Well, if we're going to talk shop-talk, we shouldn't be out in the open. We should…" He trails off, gesturing over his shoulder.

She nods and follows him back into his safe house. Inside, she drops her purse on the desk and walks straight to the refrigerator. She can feel Vince's startled gaze on her as she seizes a beer.

She's going to need a drink for this.

He takes it from her, uses the corner of his shirt to twist the top off, and hands it back. She raises it in mock salute, tips it to her lips, and takes a healthy drink. It does nothing to steady her mind, so she takes another, just for good measure.

Vince follows her lead, and they sit down on opposite sides of the old couch facing each other, each cradling a beer in their hands.

"So, what's Flemming's big weakness?" he asks with a forced smile. He is trying to act normal, like they did before he saw her dancing, before he got so close to her. It isn't helping.

"He has a daughter."

She barely registers the look of shock on his face before she drops her eyes to the bottle in her hand. Watching his face is too much right now. Instead, she picks at the label and waits for this to sink in.

"A daughter," Vince says slowly. "As in a female child?"

She cannot help but give a little laugh. The corner of the label is coming free now.

"Yes, Vince, that is generally the definition of a daughter."

"How can he have a daughter?"

A scrap comes away under her fingers as she shakes her head. "Do we need to have _the_ talk, Vince? You know where babies come from, right?"

"Yeah, I know where babies come from," he shoots back, his voice becoming mildly annoyed. "I made one. But he's the president of a major corporation, how can no one know that he has a kid? Or is she, you know, a…uh…well, not—"

"No, she's not a bastard," Orwell whispers. "She's the daughter of Peter and Desiree Flemming."

"Wait, he's married, too? Well, where the hell is she? His wife, I mean."

"Desiree isn't in the picture anymore," she explains, dropping another strip of paper onto the floor. "I don't know where she is. That's not the point."

Vince's eyes are on her again. She can feel them like a physical touch. He is studying her, and though her head is bowed with her hair falling around her, she is afraid what he will see there.

"His daughter," Vince says, "does she have a name?"

Her lips open, but it takes a moment for the words to come. She has not said them in a very long time.

"Jamie. Jamie Eleanor Flemming."

"Jamie."

His voice whispering that name makes her breath catch, but she clears her throat softly and nods.

"Yes. His father's name was James, you see."

Orwell takes a breath, and then another drink.

"How do you know about her?" he asks softly.

"I used to know Jamie," she says. A long, thin strip peels from the label. "A long time ago."

She hears Vince take a drink and can see the light reflecting from his bottle dancing across the couch.

"Poor kid," he says suddenly. "She must have had a hell of a childhood. What kind of father must someone like Peter Flemming be?"

The paper hangs from her fingers, a long, thin curl. She watches it swaying in the breeze of her own breath for a moment as she tries to find the words to describe her father.

"When Jamie was seven," Orwell begins, "she was practicing for a dance recital. Unfortunately, she was practicing in the parlor, where Desiree liked to keep the expensive furniture and antiques for visitors to see. Jamie started spinning without properly spotting, and she hit a vase with her elbow. It fell to the floor and shattered. It was an ancient Chinese vase worth roughly two million dollars.

"When it fell it made a big crash. Jamie was still standing and staring at it when Flemming ran in to see what had happened. There it was, two million dollars in pieces all over the Oriental rug, and even at seven Jamie knew that two million is a really big number. She started to cry and apologize. Do you know what Flemming said to her?"

She sees Vince shake his head in her peripheral vision. "No, but I've got a pretty good idea."

Her smile is somewhere between reminiscent and pained. "He said, 'It's just a thing. You are the only true treasure I have.'"

The words hang in the air between them for several long, silent moments. Vince says nothing. She's stunned him; that she knows. He struggles for words for a moment, and she cannot help him. He is weighing all he knows about Peter Flemming, the cruelty and the cunning and the manipulation, against the picture his partner, his friend, just whispered.

"Peter Flemming was…is a good father?" he asks slowly, his voice shaken and uncertain.

"Yes." She flings the curl of paper away, but she is still unable to meet his eyes. "He was the Daddy every girl wants. Horses and dance lessons and ice skating and trips to Paris and lots of sparkly jewelry…anything Jamie wanted, Jamie got. But it wasn't just things. Daddy would stay up late watching movies, even girly ones, and after a bad day at dance lessons or piano lessons he would send the cook home and take her out for ice cream for dinner.

"Jamie adored him. He was her whole world."

Vince shifts on the couch, reminding her she has an audience. "Did Desiree ever find out about the vase?"

"She was furious," Orwell remembers with a little laugh. "But he took the blame for it. What could she do to him? He had all the money. Of course, she knew it had been Jamie. I think that's what made her so angry. You see, he spent all his time either at work or with Jamie, so he didn't have any time for Desiree. And she…Desiree had headaches. They kept her in bed a lot.

"Desiree left them when Jamie was ten."

Orwell knows someday she might have to explain about her father and the red and white bathroom floor, and about the White Door, and about Dr. Samuel, but today is not that day.

"Daddy's business really started to take off when Jamie was around nine or ten," she continues. "He started to leave on longer and longer business trips. There weren't so many trips or ice cream dinners. Jamie, the spoilt little rich girl, thought it wasn't fair that she wasn't getting everything she was used to. When she was thirteen, Daddy was away on a business trip for her birthday, so they didn't get to go to Rome like she wanted. Instead, all she got was a thoroughbred horse of impeccable lineage and a pretty set of diamond earrings.

"She threw a right royal tantrum. She thought the world wasn't fair. A week later a man kidnapped her."

She hears Vince's sharp breath. His hand falls on her knee, and gripping it for a brief moment. "Y…she was kidnapped? For ransom?"

"Oh, no," Orwell murmurs, shaking her head. "No, he kidnapped Jamie with the intention of killing her."

She moves to put her drink down beside the couch for an excuse to turn her head away. Her voice is muffled, but her memories are not. They are a hot knife in her brain, slicing between Jamie and Orwell. This was the day that changed everything.

"He pulled Jamie into a car while she was walking with some friends. The other girls just stood there in shock. They were all just kids. The door slammed and the car sped away before Jamie even knew what happened. She was so scared. No one had ever tried to hurt her before. Not like this. She screamed. She threatened. She begged. He just told her to shut up and kept driving.

"He was smart enough not to go too far, though. The car would be easy to trace. He pulled up to this old house and told Jamie if she tried to run he'd hurt her. He took her inside and made her sit on the couch. She was old enough to know what some men did to girls in abandoned houses. He had a gun. He paced up and down in front of Jamie, pointing the gun at her and then dropping it again. He was trying to talk himself into it. Jamie started to cry. She said she wanted to go home. She said she wanted her Daddy."

Orwell sits back against the couch, her head falling back and her eyes closed. "That's when he hit her, and he started to scream. You see, this man, Matthew, his boss was a man named Grant. Grant was a business rival of Flemming's in the less respectable realm of his corporation. There was a…hostile takeover. Grant was killed. Then Flemming ordered his men to take out the rest of the organization. He didn't just want Grant's organization destroyed, he told his men to burn them to the ground and salt the earth. He didn't want anyone to ever resist him again. Matthew wasn't home when Flemming's men came for him. His family was. A wife and two daughters…murdered in their own home.

"Matthew was just Grant's driver.

"He told Jamie everything, the way he found the front door open, the overturned chair in the living room, his wife in the kitchen with two shots to her chest, his older girl almost at the back door, and the youngest…the youngest was hiding in her bedroom closet. One shot between the eyes and they left her there amongst all her pretty dance outfits. That's how _her_ daddy found her."

There is silence in the room for a long time. She can hear Vince breathing. It's the only thing she can hear, and it's strangely soothing. She manages to find her voice again.

"Matthew didn't shoot Jamie. He wanted to make Flemming pay, but he wasn't a monster. When the police found the house where he had Jamie he knew there was no way he would be given a chance to stand trial before something terrible happened to him. The police broke in to find Jamie sitting on the couch, screaming, and Matthew with smoke still rising from the back of his head.

"After that…everything unraveled. When Daddy first came to her in the hospital Jamie could lay her head on his shoulder and believe everything was going to be okay, but deep down she knew nothing was alright. Flemming went away again and Jamie started looking for answers. She found the report on Matthew's family. She found the report on Grant's death.

"The snowball kept rolling down the hill and getting bigger and bigger. Jamie just found out more and more until she just couldn't take it anymore. When she was sixteen she left."

There. It's done. She takes a deep breath and sighs.

"Orwell," Vince whispers. His hand lands on her knee again, and stays there.

"I want him finished, Vince," she says without opening her eyes. "I want Peter Flemming finished."

"Orwell."

"I don't want him to ever, _ever_ hurt anyone again. I want him captured and bound up in some deep oubliette where he will never get to play another game with human lives again."

"Orwell!"

"I want him DESTROYED!"

"Jamie!"

Her eyes snap open. His blue eyes are so close to hers that she can feel his breath on her face. Her lips begin to tremble as she gazes pleadingly up at him.

"I just don't want him to get hurt."

A hand grazes over her cheek. There is a storm of emotion in those blue eyes, rage and pain and despair, but none of it is for her. He is not angry with her.

The tears come slowly. She has not cried for years, but Vince has reminded her how. She wants to smile, to let him know that she is not falling apart inside. She cannot, though, because that would be a lie.

"It's okay," he whispers. His hand slides to the back of her neck and urges her gently closer. She falls towards him. He has one arm around her. With his other hand he brushes the hair back from her face. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."

"It's not," she argues weakly. "It's never going to be okay."

There is nothing uncertain when his lips touch hers this time. They are warm and solid and his arm is strong around her. She's clinging to his shoulders before she even realizes her hands have moved. There are tears mingling on their lips, but Vince ignores them and she has long been immune to the taste of sadness. For one moment she does think that there _is_ another woman. Then he pulls her closer and breathes a name, and it is _her_ name sighing from his mouth as he kisses her forehead and her nose and her cheek. She sinks her fingers into his hair and pulls softly, and for once as her hand moves there is no pain. His lips find their way back to hers.

She can taste him, and smell him, and hear him breathing and murmuring _her_ name, and feel him all around her, and for a moment, this is everything.


End file.
